A Critical Pedagogy of Recuperation

Abstract

Using the term ‘recuperation’ from their experiences working alongside activists in the ‘occupied factories' of Argentina, the authors illustrate how ‘occupied spaces' were transformed into ‘recuperated’ sites of pedagogical, cultural and artistic production. Focusing on the IMPA factory (Industrias Metalúrgicas y Plásticas Argentina) located in Buenos Aires, this article examines how the unique visions and alternative arrangements created by workers, intellectuals and artists became reality and how such visions and arrangements were indivisible from the struggle for worker self-determination. The authors note that the pedagogy of recuperation, while drawing its inspiration from the struggles of the occupied factories, schools and cultural centers of Argentina, is in the last instance a transnational pedagogy of resistance, one that is multi-voiced, epistemologically decolonized and decolonizing, and dedicated to fostering oppositional and alternative spaces of reciprocity and struggle.